Cisco 1000 Series Aggregation Services Routers (ASR 1000) vs FortiGate

• In most cases, the larger ASR routers such as the 1006 and 1009s have sufficient capabilities to be used as a Core network router.
• The smaller ASRs such as the 1002 devices are best suited on the edge, capable of handling a limited number of connections due to the fixed chassis.

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• My favorite aspect of the Fortigate product is the ease of use. The GUI is very easy to get around. The products rules and configuration are easy to learn and apply. The informational tools are easy to look at and produce results that are intuitive and quick to assess.
• Another great attribute of the FortiGate product was reasonable pricing for the product and then the ongoing support. Living in the SMB space with tight governmental budgets is a huge factor in all my decisions. When a company like Fortinet comes along and produces good products at very reasonable prices it is good for SMB companies like mine. Many vendors price their products in a fashion that is beyond consideration by SMBs like myself.
• Support is always a big factor in consideration of any product for our organization. Fortinet support has been extremely good. They have provided an onsite engineer at no cost to help us design, implement and maintain new products when needed. The call support has also been excellent, with quick response times and knowledgeable technicians.

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• Licensing on the routers is more complicated than it needs to be. We have the ASR routers along with ISR routers both have the license of the advanced service, however, on the ISR routers that license did not include the app-X feature needed to send the application specific net-flow data we wanted. It would be better if Cisco was consistence with the features included with licenses.
• Some software patches are quite involved as there is a boot loaded and IOS that must be upgraded.

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• Fortigate's SSL VPN client isn't available via MSI with an easy options for mass deployment and configuration out of the box. You need to have a Fortinet Developer Network license to create a custom deploy image.
• Fortinet's after hours support is overseas and is adequate. Not stellar.

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• Positive of ASR 1000 is its cost effectiveness as a WAN aggregation router providing 10G-100G interface limited by 200G performance.
• As such there is no negative side, but if you need more then 200 Gbps performance then you need to change the Router, that's the only option.

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• (Positive) The network is secured.
• (Positive) As an analyst, I have to convince C level executives regarding protection from threats, intrusion, and productivity of the network resources. And I am achieving all the segments with ease of access.
• (Neutral) The unavailability of post-sale service requires improvements. But due to the vast community of users and excellent documentation of the product, hides the lack of post-sale service availability.

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